Blockers: Michael Lewis on the Rebels in the Deep State

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We've been doing a number of shows recently on how to block evil government. We did a show with the New York Times writer, Gal Beckerman, who had a very interesting book, and we've come back to it many times in the show, How to Be a Dissident, about how to stand up to authority. We also did one recently with, Paul Rogat Loeb, whose anthology, The Impossible Will Take a Little While— It's made up of all sorts of great dissident writers from everyone from Solzhenitsyn to Havel to Mandela. And we've also done shows on popular dissent, popular blockers with the writer Skye Perryman, for example, whose book Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times is about how to reclaim your power, fight for freedom, and reimagine democracy. But today, we're talking about blocking not government, but blockers within government. My guest today doesn't need much of an introduction. America's leading, most illustrious nonfiction writer, the author of many, many books. And his latest book is called Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State. And, Michael is joining us from Seattle where he's on book tour. Michael, is your book about dissidents within the government? Is that— can we use the d word, or is that inaccurate?

00:01:55 Michael Lewis: It's probably not fair to them. They probably wouldn't consider themselves dissidents, but they were put in a— the position of the dissident when they are— I mean, they're institutional people whose institutions are under attack and who've got, codes of ethics and conduct and pledge an oath to the Constitution, and that put them in crossways with the powers that be. And that— so the title comes from Elon Musk. Elon Musk, when— you know, Elon Musk with the Department of Government Efficiency rolls into Washington. He tells the muskrats, the 20-year-olds who went out to go actually execute his vision, that he needed to— they needed to find the blockers and get rid of them. And what he meant by that was people who get in the way of what he took to be progress. But then they went and started to do stuff that was, well, illegal. And people got in their way and had their heads lopped off. And the— I wasn't thinking in terms of dissidents, but I was thinking in terms of, like, you could describe the environment that's been created in the new administration by what it won't tolerate, by what can't survive inside of it. And so this was a journey through, like, the— a travelogue through the species that have— are going extinct because the habitat has changed.

00:03:20 Andrew Keen: So should we admire these people that you cover? I mean, were they confronted with a complicated or maybe not so complicated moral dilemma about, either ignoring the actions of government, which they thought was immoral or stupid or resisting. Is there a moral dilemma at the heart of this narrative?

00:03:42 Michael Lewis: Each character has a different story. They're kind of six main characters. And in a couple of cases, they're admirable in the way that people who would have resisted the Germans rolling into Paris, would— were admirable. I mean, that they couple of cases, yes, they're being asked to break the law, to violate the trust, that they that they've been given. I mean, for example, Kathleen Walters, who is the chief privacy officer at the IRS, is being asked to turn over to DHS, the database of 7 million undocumented workers, so that ICE can hunt them down using their— the database contains their current home addresses. And clearly against the law, to— for her to hand it over, these— the databases— those tax returns are protected like American tax returns. And standing up to them cost her her career. And he [as spoken: she] was brave as hell to do it, and there are other people in the IRS who folded. So there are cases like that, but I think in some of the cases, like, there's, like, one of the characters, Alex Maranghides, I mean, a wild story of a man inventing a fire science, the science of how to deal with urban interface, urban wildlife interface fires [ed.: the term is wildland-urban interface]. I mean, in each case, it was— it wasn't so much resistance as him being pushed out by the hostility of the management, to what he was up to or to what anybody was up to in their organization. And in the case of, I don't know, Francis Collins, who I use as a character sort of to dramatize what was going on in the long-term science project that the government has engaged in since World War II. He just got whacked. I mean, it was like a bullet in the back of the head and a mob hit, and he didn't even have a chance— he didn't have a chance to resist. They were worried about how he might resist, I think, is why he got whacked. His ability to resist, his ability to cause them trouble. But I don't know if you call that a hero. I mean, he might be heroic for other reasons in his career, but in this situation, he wasn't even [unclear] so much as given the choice. You know? So I think it's just like each character was a stand-in for a different sort of function of government, and each function of government was differently affected by this change in Washington. And the change was really simple. The change was we're gonna turn this 2-million-person nonpartisan workforce into a loyalist operation that serves the interest of Donald Trump and— or whoever happens to be president. And when you change the environment that way, when you change the incentives of all these people who are working in government, you gotta— you just got very— the functions start to look a lot different, and these people were the casualties.

00:06:32 Andrew Keen: Were they then, Michael, in a way, if not offended, did they become resistors because of this shift from a traditional rational-legal state to borrow some language from Max Weber to a patrimonial state, one that Trump or his associates, his cronies, used to enrich themselves? I mean, what was the objection? As you say, you've got six characters in the book. They're all very different. Everyone from Kathleen Walters to Francis Collins, and they're probably the most similar. But were they offended by this undermining of the traditional rational-legal state, and by its descent, if that's the right word, into vulgar patrimonialism. Yes.

00:07:18 Michael Lewis: Yeah. I mean, all of them were offended that way. All of them were aware that this was not normal, that they, I mean, this— in the simple cases that their job previously had been to enforce the law or uphold the law, and that all of a sudden their job is to do whatever they're told to do by the boss no matter what the law says. And that disturbed them to their core, the people who were put in that position. But those were only a couple of them. I think that— I mean, if you take— kinda case by case, if you take— I don't know. If you take Francis Collins, he'd run the NIH, the National Institutes of Health for— under Obama and Trump and Biden, and had just taken kind of for granted that science— that scientific— the funding for long-term scientific research is just the private sector won't do, that has yielded gold for decades. That would just— I don't think he ever thought, like, that would be threatened. Like, why would someone come in and stick a wrench in that? But the Trump— but Trump administration comes in, and someone in the Trump administration, Russell Vought, the director of the OMB, sees that the $50 billion that is going into the NIH and going out the door to universities can be used as a lever to— as a— as an instrument to make demands that have nothing to do with the research, to make demands of the universities, that he wants to make. Like, I don't know, change your admissions policy. That it— by seizing control of the money, and again, this is probably unlawful. I mean, Congress has the power of the purse. But by seizing control of the money, he was able to accomplish other things. And I think I don't think anybody saw that coming. I mean, any— and, yes, of course, Francis Collins is deeply offended by that. So they were all— yes, they're all disturbed. The exception would be— the one exception would be, Sahil Lavingia who came in with DOGE and who, you know, he came in with a— he was a curious DOGE member because he came in with actually not just to hang out with Elon Musk, but he came in because he had a specific agenda. He was just— he was personally disturbed that the IRS sent him paper. He's like, why do I have to pay my taxes on paper? Why do I get my refund in the form of a check? Why can't I just do it as an app? I could fix that. He was a technologist who had been— he'd kinda made his fortune. He was the second employee of the— of Pinterest, and he had something he really wanted to do. And when he got in, he was very hopeful. It was like, this [unclear] could be a great thing. I think he was right too that if it had gone a different way, it could have been a great thing. And— but he finds that what they're trying to do isn't what they say they're trying to do. They aren't actually trying to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. They aren't actually gonna cut trillions of dollars out of the federal budget. What they're actually doing is traumatizing the workforce for and softening it up for what is gonna be essentially a power grab. And he, like, he's— when you talk to him about it, like, what his moral response is to it, it's lower key, but it's kind of like, I thought I was signing up for one thing, and I get there and it's another thing. And it doesn't— and the thing they're doing doesn't make any real sense to me. And the government is different than I thought it was from the outside. When I got into the inside, I saw that, like, there are a lot of people who are very good at their jobs. There are a lot of people who really cared about their jobs. Of course, there are people who aren't, but that's true in every organization. And that, it wasn't nearly as inefficient as he thought. He gets fired by DOGE for saying that, for saying to a reporter that he's spent some months at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and he was—

00:11:19 Andrew Keen: Did he care? I mean, given that he didn't need the job.

00:11:22 Michael Lewis: He care— he— it disturbed him that he was willing to put aside his private interests, to try to lean— put his shoulder into what he thought was a public problem that he could solve, and that he was— it— he was never— he was— wasn't given a chance. So he cared about that. And he cared enough that, when DOGE washes out, when it all— when it's ended and Elon Musk leaves and he and Trump are at odds with each other, someone calls Sahil and says, look. We saw you wanted to come in and fix something. Come back to the IRS and do it. Then he actually ditches his private career, tells his wife that, look, we have enough passive income. We have to worry about money [as spoken: don't have to]. I'm gonna go to work for the IRS for a decade because it might take a decade. And he returns and becomes a career civil servant. So he cares— so he did care that they didn't go about it in the spirit that would have been, you know, that would have actually yielded some positive results.

00:12:18 Andrew Keen: Where are you, Michael, on reinventing the state? I don't know if you've had a chance to see, Jill Lepore's new book, The Artificial State, which, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, which I thought was quite critical of the idea of bringing new technology into the state. I know that you, a couple of the people that you cite in the book at the end in terms of, acknowledgments are Jen Pahlka, who's always been very much in favor of reinventing the American state in technological terms, and, Max Stier, who's actually been on the show before, who runs the Partnership for Public Service. What did this book, this project, all these conversations teach you about whether or not this Leviathan, archaic, bureaucratic American state can actually be reinvented and whether what some of the things that Max— Musk said, of course, he's a— an odd character. But some of the stuff that he said, if you take it away from Musk himself, is actually credible.

00:13:26 Michael Lewis: Alright. Those are two different questions. We'll start with Musk. Because if I was shocked by anything when I kinda got into this, I was shocked by this sheer volume of lies that came out of my mouth [as spoken: his mouth]. I mean, it was—

00:13:40 Andrew Keen: Did you see the movie, by the way, the new movie?

00:13:42 Michael Lewis: I have not— I've been on a book tour, so I— You're like, no culture has entered into me.

00:13:47 Andrew Keen: It's only four hours, Michael, so you've got lots of time.

00:13:50 Michael Lewis: I've been inflicting myself on the culture, but I'll get back to inhaling it when I'm done. But it was— so the Musk mostly what came out of his mouth was so generally false, like, in the specifics. And some of it— I mean, I'll give you an example, that just, like, put— puts the hair on the back of my neck up. When they went into the US Institute of Peace, a quasi-government agency that no one had ever heard of, Musk went on Fox News and was talking about how— that they had— that they had funded the Taliban and that kind of stuff. And when you dug— and then he named a supposed Taliban accomplice or ally— who they had—

00:14:39 Andrew Keen: Halimi. Yeah. Qasem Halimi.

00:14:41 Michael Lewis: Yeah. Who they had written checks to, who was actually effective. He was not [as spoken; the sense is that he was] an important American asset. I mean, he wasn't a spy for us exactly, but he was an intelligence asset and also used by the State Department to negotiate with the Taliban and was unsafe in his own country. He was already in exile. And— but when Musk tweets that they found this money going to this guy and this guy was a member of the Taliban, the Taliban know who he is. They know he's not a member of the Taliban. And they round up his cousins and his brothers and, you know, his family for beatings and torture and— yeah.

00:15:21 Andrew Keen: I shouldn't be laughing. I mean, it's—

00:15:23 Michael Lewis: A contest [unclear]. That's treason. That's treason.

00:15:25 Andrew Keen: It's— You mean on the part of Musk?

00:15:27 Michael Lewis: On the part of Musk.

00:15:28 Andrew Keen: I mean, you begin the book. I mean, the first thing one sees at the beginning of the book, is a quote from Musk on X. And I'm quoting him. Any government institution is most likely to be the opposite of its name, which is classically inane, classically Muskian [unclear].

00:15:45 Michael Lewis: And, you know, it's not even original because I actually said something like that in the book I wrote about the first Trump administration, how all these— it is true. A lot of the agencies are sort of misnamed.

00:15:55 Andrew Keen: And this is The Fifth Risk, from 2018.

00:15:58 Michael Lewis: That— that's right. And so it's a joke I've— that you can make. But you know who the— and the joke is sort of right, but you know what it's completely right about is the agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency. He created a thing that was a tool for wreaking havoc in the— and in the name of efficiency. We— it was about everything but efficiency. But let's— let me get back to your question. So is it— I think it— I don't know if— I don't know what Musk ever said that was actually true, but it's true that someone like Musk could come in and help by addressing the decrepit technology. It is true. They're in place— effectively, the— our— the governments don't do well in times of rapid technological change. They don't keep up. And it isn't like— the government can still function. The IRS can still collect taxes, and you basically don't notice just how janky it all is. But it would be very nice if the computers were up to date and if you could do it all on an app and that kind of thing. So there are things— but this is sort of small— it's sort of small bore, except that when the government starts to suck because it doesn't have the right technology— when Obama, you know, moves heaven and earth to get his health care plan, his health care bill passed, and then the computers crash and nobody can sign up, I mean, that's kind of catastrophic. So that— that's the kind of thing that— I mean, of course, the government can upgrade its technology. I mean, this is a practical question and they're practical solutions. It— so if— to the extent Musk talked about that, sure. But that wasn't what he was talking about most of the time. And I was shocked by just how much— and I tell you, not only how much stuff that came out of his mouth that just was a flat out lie, how convinced his friends, the people around him— I didn't talk to Musk, but I talked to some of the people who were— who were kinda close to him, who were kind of in his business affairs. How convinced they were that he thought he was still telling the truth. That— one of them said to me, you don't understand Elon if you think that he's a— he thinks that he thinks he's lying. He thinks whatever he says is true. So I don't know what's worse. It's like, is he just a liar or is he a fabulist? And, like, he thinks all these things he's saying is true without any information. Either one of them are— is disturbing. And whatever he said that was true was trivial compared to the nonsense that came out of his mouth. So your first part of the question, though, was something else. It was a harder question to answer. It's like, is there any possibility for government? And my answer to that is we're lost if we— if we— if there isn't. Like, there's too much the government needs to do. It's not— you can't— it's not like the private sector is gonna do all this stuff that the government does. And it— you know, people will say— people will say they don't trust the government, the American government. You poll Americans, I'm sure you get deplorable numbers if you ask them, do you trust the government, the federal government? But in their actions, every day, they're trusting the government with their lives. They get on airplanes. They drink the water. They eat the food. You know, they buy Treasury bonds. They hold money. That in their displayed behavior, Americans deeply trust their government. And almost— when they're asked that question, they don't know what it feels like not to be able to trust your government. And so I think that when you start flirting with a government that's actually untrustworthy, which is what we're flirting with now by turning it into a loyalist operation, you're gonna set off alarm bells in people's heads. It's gonna be new— a new kind of thing. Oh, oh, oh, they can't do this. You know, they can't take that away from me. I wanna be able to eat the lettuce. You know? I wanna be able to get on an airplane. I don't want my tax returns weaponized. That— so I think that, the minute you start stirring up the kind of trouble in the government that Musk, Vought, Trump have, I think you wake up the people. I mean, I think this is one reason this book has found such a market is that people are kind of aware, oh, this is different. It is different and it's threatening.

00:20:30 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it comes out of, as you know, your 2018 book, The Fifth Risk, on Trump One. Your friend who actually introduced me to you, Jacob Weisberg, was on the show recently. His new book is— eight— is Profiles in Cowardice, and he focuses on people who were critical of Trump One and then thrown in their lot for one reason or other with Trump Two. Could you have written that book too, Michael, given the way in which presumably there are many people within the government who did what Musk or Trump asked even if they knew it was a catastrophe both for the government and for many human beings?

00:21:10 Michael Lewis: That's a fun— this is a fun thought experiment. First, Jacob is better suited to writing that book than I was because what— it was a series of counterblasts. It was a series of essentially, exposés of the behavior of— it was— what Jake— Jacob is an unbelievable, unbelievable forensic journalist. And he's an— he's a son of a judge, and it shows he knows how to make a case, and he's making the case against these people, and he's, you know, he's completely nailed them. The people he has written about, Jeff Bezos, the president of Harvard [ed.: the university president profiled is Dartmouth's Sian Beilock], Steve Schwarzman.

00:21:53 Andrew Keen: Roberts, the head of the— [unclear]

00:21:56 Michael Lewis: Yeah. Mitch McConnell. Brilliantly done. That— that's one thing. You're right. If— but could I have gone into the government and done it? It would have been a different exercise because he's writing about people who are operating from positions of power, who in many cases had the ability to resist Trump, and who didn't. The people in the government who caved, were in much more vulnerable positions. They're more— in some ways, they're more sympathetic. It's sad. I mean, they abandoned principle. They turned the— they turn— they averted their gaze from the oath they took to the Constitution, but their careers are at stake. They're not rich people. They're not powerful people. They're used to kinda generally trying to go along, get along with any administration that comes in. But you're right about— this is— it's a really interesting exercise because if you go across the government— I didn't do this in the book, but if you go across the government, you will see that in almost every agency where they're— where they— where they were— the Trump administration was resisted when they tried to do something illegal by the people who were kinda at the top, the senior civil service. And almost every place they drilled down into the organization and found, like, someone eight rungs deep living in, you know, East Jesus, Georgia and who was a Trump supporter and lifted them up to sign off on the stuff they wanted to do and made them— gave them titular responsibility for agencies that they were not qualified to run. That though— that cast of characters, it is a cast, and you could do a series of stories about who these people were and why they did what they did. But you'd be dealing with a— you wouldn't be dealing with Jeff Bezos, you know, multibillionaire. You'd be dealing with, you know, Joe Smith, who was being paid $60,000 a year to do something functional barely in a government office in the middle of nowhere, who was all of a sudden discovered by the Trump people as a possible loyalist and encouraged to sign off on what they did. Different kind of story, but, yes, there are people who caved in the face of the pressure or people who just joined a political movement. You know, they're meant to be nonpartisan civil service— service, but they were— they joined in the political spirit at the moment and join forces with the Trump administration. So it could be done. It could be.

00:24:19 Andrew Keen: Very briefly. I know you gotta run in a couple of minutes. Do you think there'll be a bloodletting after all this blows over? I mean, if it does blow over, do you think that there will be people, some of the characters in your book or others that you didn't cover— who will go after some of the people in government and say, look. This is what you did, and you didn't need to do it. We didn't.

00:24:43 Michael Lewis: Got it. This thing could bounce so many different directions. I don't think the people— the particular people I profile have vindictive streaks. I— they all have cons— they're all, like, by nature, kinda quiet and constructive. The thing they would participate in and I can see them participating in is attempt to rebuild institutions. And I suspect to a person that they would say, it's not gonna be that useful to engage in a campaign of retribution against the people who behave badly. However, the— I don't doubt that there'd be people in Congress who would enjoy that spectacle. And, but, you know, it's sorta like take a number here. Right? I mean, if this— if a retribution campaign starts, that's not where it's gonna start. I mean, these are kind of— these are not— they don't— they do not make compelling villains, the people we're talking about. They're gonna start with the DOGE kids. And— yeah.

00:25:46 Andrew Keen: And I can't imagine our mutual friend, Max Stier at the, Partnership for Public Service will be leading any of these witch hunts. Most people who are friends of good government tend to be reasonable and relatively gentle, I think.

00:26:01 Michael Lewis: You know, Max is an— is such an interesting case. That organization, the Partnership [unclear], I've thought since I encountered it, was like the most worthy of your dollars kind of organization. Yeah.

00:26:12 Andrew Keen: And they got the coolest. I mean, I assume you went to their offices in DC. Amazing offices.

00:26:17 Michael Lewis: Good all— but they all— they've just been, like, he's got a bead on how to repair the government and— or— and he's not under any illusion that there are thing— not things that need to be fixed. And he's actually— he's done things that are incredibly powerful, like requiring the transition between presidencies, then getting that law passed. Or even the Sammies awards, these awards they give out to civil servants, like trying to create a culture of recognition as opposed to just punishment. He— he's had real effects. And if you made me God, if you gave me the magic wand and said, Michael, how would you go about starting the conversation about how to fix this place? I'd haul him up in front of Congress and have him explain. I mean, he— I think he's just like the guy to go to for this. And no. He would say— he'd— he would— it'd be the last thing he'd wanna do is go lynch some civil servants because in moments of weakness, they've thrown in their lot with the—

00:27:15 Andrew Keen: I didn't use the l word, but, well, maybe we should, the lynching word. But, certainly, it would be an interesting— Finally, Michael, when— I mean, one of the things that always strikes me, and I'm sure it's struck you many times, is the— with this Trump administration, especially the second one, is there's so much smoke and mirrors and so— it seems so little fire in so many ways. And, obviously, this DOGE thing is absurd and catastrophic on character [unclear]. But when the smoke blows over, has this thing, which didn't last very long after all, it was in the headlines for a few months, and now it's disappeared entirely. Has it— Outside USAID, has it really made any difference?

00:28:10 Michael Lewis: Well, DOGE is just part of the story. I mean, the Trump administration has made a huge difference. I mean, just take what they've done with the funding of science. They've seized control of the money. This— the idea that the scientists decide which science gets funded has been abandoned and Russell Vought is deciding which science gets funded. I mean, that is— that is— that's catastrophic for that for long-term science research, which is a really important function of government. The data function, like, oh, you can weaponize tax data. If that is allowed to kind of continue or become part of, like, the fabric of the government, that's huge. What you're gonna do is corrupt all government data because no one's gonna trust the government enough to give them data. And without government data, we don't you have a really distorted picture of reality. Public safety stuff, mixed bag. I mean, do I feel less— I feel less safe getting on an airplane or eating food or drinking water than I did before. And so, actually, I've just saw a poll that Americans' confidence in the safety of the food supply has been plummeting. I don't know if that's justified, if it's just sort of like a reaction to one crisis, but I don't think it's wrong in the sense that if you're running those public safety functions as a loyalist thing— like, you don't want planes to crash. You don't want people to die of food poisoning because it's not good for your brand. But it's harder to get competent people who do the job well if they've gotta pass a loyalty test first. You— the kind of people you get into those jobs, it's a big deal. So I think the answer is yes. They've done a lot of damage. It— and damage all could be repaired. So it's it, you know, it's TBD. Like, what the long-term consequences of the administration are.

00:30:09 Andrew Keen: Well, I hope you've got your new book in the hands of some powerful Democrats. I could imagine somebody like Pete Buttigieg really enjoying it because it probably needs to become, maybe not the book, but these conversations about the role of the state, its efficiency, its transparency, and all the rest of it. It needs to become an important debate certainly amongst progressives. Ezra Klein already made it important in Abundance, so you're only adding to that debate.

00:30:36 Michael Lewis: Yeah. No. I think that's right. I mean, I think that I've had a senior Democrat in Congress wanna take the book and build hearings around it as a way to kind of just like—

00:30:47 Andrew Keen: Wow.

00:30:48 Michael Lewis: Teach. Like, what is this thing that we— that we've been mismanaging? How do— how should we manage it? Does it make sense to have four and a half thousand political appointees who don't know anything about their agencies sent in to run the agencies? You know? It's just a— there is a there's a conversation to be had, and it's— I don't know if it's gonna be had, but it's more likely to be had now.

00:31:08 Andrew Keen: Well, essential reading as always with everything that Michael Lewis writes. Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State. Michael, real honor to have you on the show and love to get you back. There's so much more to talk about. Thank you so much.

00:31:19 Michael Lewis: Thanks for having me. See you later.